My colleagues and I have spent weeks covering the sprawling policy bill that was finalized by the House of Representatives on Thursday. President Trump will sign the bill into law during a ceremony at the White House at 5 p.m. on Friday.
In short, the bill could remake American energy. It is poised to do this by slashing tax breaks for wind and solar power and electric cars while maintaining some federal support for sources like nuclear reactors and geothermal plants.
The legislation, which carries President Trump’s domestic policy agenda, provides a boost to fossil fuels and dismantles many of the biggest actions the federal government has ever taken to fight climate change, even as scientists warn that rising temperatures are creating acute dangers from extreme heat, deadly wildfires, crop failures and floods.
Scientists say this shift in American energy policy will result in a warmer planet. As Lisa Friedman recently reported, “scientists are warning the result would increase the likelihood that the Earth will heat up by an average of 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of this century.”
And at a time when demand for electricity is rising, companies and analysts say the ending of tax credits for solar and wind could raise electricity prices by making it harder to add new power to the grid.
Here’s a closer look at how the bill will affect some key industries.
Loser: Solar and wind
The bill would quickly phase out tax credits for wind and solar power, two of the fastest growing sources of electricity in the United States.
Under the new law, projects would likely need to start construction within the next year — roughly by July 2026 — to have the best chance of getting the full credit. After that, the subsidy becomes harder to get and swiftly expires.
The wind and solar industries could shrink but are unlikely to vanish, experts said.
“We’ll continue to build out renewables, but we’ll build out a lot slower,” said David Carroll, chief renewables officer for ENGIE North America, a major power plant developer. The changes, he added, “are ultimately going to hurt consumers, because it’s going to raise prices.”
Winner: Fossil fuels
Trump came into office promising to expand the production and use of oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is heating the planet. Here are a few ways in which the bill achieves that:
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The legislation mandates oil and gas lease sales in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and the American West.
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It lowers the royalty rates that coal companies pay to mine on federal lands.
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It provides additional tax breaks to oil and gas producers for “intangible drilling and development costs.”
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It delays for 10 years a hefty fee on oil and gas companies that leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from their operations.
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In a surprising last-minute change, Senate Republicans added a 2.5 percent tax break for U.S. production of metallurgical coal, a form of coal that has been used for decades in steel-making and is mainly exported to countries like India and Brazil.
Loser: Electric cars
The bill is likely to put a major dent in the American electric car market by repealing federal incentives that have been critical to its growth.
Tax credits worth up to $7,500 to buy new or used electric cars will end by Sept. 30, 2025 under the new bill. (Those credits were previously available until 2032.) Also expiring is a loophole that allowed companies to pass tax savings on to people who leased vehicles. Incentives for businesses to buy electric trucks will also vanish.
The grid
The tangled story of a clean power transmission line
For more than a decade now, developers have been trying to build an 800-mile power line across the Midwest that would carry wind power produced in Kansas all the way to Illinois. After innumerable delays, it finally appeared that the project was going to get built.
The project is the very sort of infrastructure that experts say is badly needed to modernize America’s aging electrical grid.
State approvals were in hand. The Biden administration in November offered a $4.9 billion conditional loan guarantee to help finance the project. And Invenergy, the company behind the transmission line, awarded $1.7 billion in contracts to construction firms, saying work would begin next year.
But on Wednesday, I reported that the Missouri attorney general, Andrew Bailey, a Republican, had opened an investigation into the project, and was requesting that his state’s public service commission reconsider its approval. A group of Missouri landowners is also fighting to keep the line off their land, and Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, is working to stymie the project, as well.
Taken together, it could all could mean additional delays for the line, known as Grain Belt Express.
Overcoming such hurdles is an inevitable part of large, complicated projects. But it was especially striking to publish an article detailing the challenges of building big infrastructure in the United States the same week that we wrote about how China has raced to take a commanding lead in the clean energy race.
To Michael Polsky, the billionaire behind Invenergy, the latest round of potential hiccups has left him exasperated.
“How can we build infrastructure in the United States of America if a single person can stop the project?” he said. — David Gelles
The Trump Administration
E.P.A. suspends 144 employees after they signed a letter criticizing Trump
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday placed 144 employees on administrative leave and opened an investigation into their decision to sign a letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the agency.
Current and former E.P.A. employees, lawyers and advocates expressed alarm at the development, saying the agency appeared to be ignoring the employees’ First Amendment rights.
The E.P.A. said its actions were warranted because the employees had signed the letter using their official titles and because the letter had denigrated the agency’s leadership.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” Brigit Hirsch, the E.P.A. press secretary, wrote in an email. — Maxine Joselow
More climate news from around the web:
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America’s hot garbage problem: Landfills across the country have been getting so hot that they are leading to smoldering fires, sickening local residents, Bloomberg reports.
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Lovebugs (the insects) are swarming in South Korea, annoying residents, The Washington Post reports.
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Six months after the Los Angeles fires, after an uneven rebuilding process, some local residents are living in R.V.s, according to Reuters.
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Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming.
The post The G.O.P. Policy Bill Would Shift U.S. Energy Policy appeared first on New York Times.
